UFO Sighting Report - Australia

Like most of us I have been following the reports of
orange lights coming out of Adelaide in recent weeks.
Firstly, I'd like to congratulate Charmaine Ballam for
all her good work in documenting the reports which
have been flowing her way. Secondly, they reminded me
of a short item I wrote in the July 1997 issue of the
"Australian UFO Reports and Experiences" which I
compiled for a while and distributed nationally. I
reproduce this below.

For a list of reports which include numerous South
Australian orange lights see
http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~auforn.

From memory the key Adelaide suburbs were the cluster
Salisbury/Elizabeth/Craigmore-which seems to be the
area of recent orange light reports.

I had a UFO investigator friend who lived in that area
and told me he saw a pattern of the lights appearing
mainly on weekend nights, never any sound, travelling
in the direction that something blown by the wind
would, never in sight for more than 15 minutes often
less. His view after seeing some of the lights for
himself, was that they were garbags, launched by bored
teenagers who enjoyed the fact that they could get
their efforts reported on TV, radio and in the press.
His advice was that we should not give them the
pleasure of media publicity.

_______________________________________
Those orange lights: what are they?

A while ago I indicated that I was seeking to
ascertain the cause of the large number of orange
lights being reported throughout Australia, as
overseas sources have been citing "flaps" of "orange
light UFOs" in this country. I contacted a number of
researchers here for their comments and opinions. I
thank those who responded to my request.

On an historical note, looking at my files reveals
that significant numbers of orange lights commenced
about 5 years ago. The "Research Digest" of the now
defunct national level group, UFO Research Australia
contain numerous sightings of these lights (copies are
available on Simon Johnson's website).

For example, issue 31, dated Nov-Dec 1992 detailed an
outburst of orange lights over Sydney in July through
September of that year. At that stage Bill Chalker
went on record as saying that one possible explanation
for some of the reports lay in the balloon hypothesis,
but that certain elements of some observation did not
fit this. Issue 33, dated Mar/Apr 1993 outlined
another outburst of orange lights over Sydney, Perth
and Adelaide. In Sydney, the view was expressed that
many were hot air balloons.

Newspaper reporting on this issue, and their views as
to cause, may be illustrated by a representative
sample:

"Lights in sky just a prank" (Sunday Times-Perth 16
Oct 1994)

"Strange lights seen over Perth this week were not
beings from space but a hoax by school children...a
hot air balloon arrangement....we found one about 18
months ago..."

"The truth is flying out there..." (The Sunday
Age-Melbourne 6 Jun 1996)

"There have been hoaxes played in the east. The fakers
send up hot air balloons made from garbage bags..."

"Fly-by-nights" (Warrnambool Standard-Victoria-14 Jun
1997)

"..."sightings" around Warrnambool last year, which
proved to be little more than yahoos releasing garbage
bags with fire lighters on wire frames..."

"...a roughly diamond shaped formation...plastic
garbage bag with a firelighter suspended beneath
it...Police had a "friendly chat" with the
culprits..."

Returning now to the comments I received. Some of us
think that the observations of the characteristics of
many of these orange lights, namely descriptions of
"floating", "drifting", "smoke trails", "slow
movements", durations of 5-15 minutes, clusters of
lights which change formation, plus the finding of
garbage bags by police and researchers indicate the
hot air balloon is the overall answer. In South
Australia, where UFORSA has kept a close eye on orange
light reports, they believe, due to the above reasons,
that most if not all orange lights are garbage bag hot
air balloons. They have had close observations where
the witness tells they could clearly see a garbage
bag, and an instance where a bag fell, still alight,
on to a house roof.

Others of us mention that the apparent travel against
the surface wind directions; the ability to stop for a
while then continue to move; and the clusters of
lights; speak against the lights being balloons. Even
here, people will agree that while some of the orange
lights are garbage bag balloons, they however, do not
believe that they are all garbage bags.

In summary, we are divided in our opinion as to the
degree in which hot air garbage bags are contributing
to the observations of orange lights in Australian
skies.